New president for Comoros isle of Anjouan

Moussa Toybou, a 45-year-old engineer, won the presidential election on the Comoros isle of Anjouan, three months after renegade leader Mohamed Bacar was ousted by joint Comoran and African Union forces.

Relative political newcomer Moussa Toybou won the presidential election on the Comoros isle of Anjouan, a government minister announced Monday, three months after renegade leader Mohamed Bacar was ousted.

The results remain provisional until validated by the constitutional court, which has three days to so following the announcement of the result of the vote count by the minister.

Djaanfari was the pre-poll frontrunner but Toybou benefitted from the support of the president of the Union, Ahmed Abdallah Sambi.

The coup-prone Indian Ocean nation consists of the islands of Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli, each governed by a local president and parliament, with the federal presidency rotating between them.

Comoran and African Union-mandated forces invaded Anjouan in March to overthrow Bacar after he refused to step down following elections they declared illegal the previous year.

Bacar and his followers fled to the French island of Reunion where a court of appeal gave him a three-month suspended jail term after finding him guilty of importing weapons.

Toybou, a civil engineer trained in Algeria, campaigned on his first-hand experience of development work on the tiny impoverished island.

"I know the mechanisms that can lift Anjouan out of under-development," he told AFP before the June 15 first round.

Toybou has also advocated reinstating some of the top officials in the secessionist Bacar's entourage for the sake of national reconciliation.

"Some of them are very experienced administrators who can still serve the island. If there are some among them who have committed abuses, then the judiciary will follow its course but you need evidence for this," he said.